Selling out Iran’s soil and water!

Iran, Agu.15,2018 - The recent sell out of the Caspian Sea by the Iranian regime in Aktau, Kazakhstan, is grabbing the headlines this day. In a nutshell: Iran’s share has plummeted from roughly 50 percent to 11!

Caspian Sea division

But equally catastrophic is the silent story of how our soil, fresh water, and other natural resources are offered for plunder by neighboring countries.

Since a few years, Iranian state-run media publish reports about the fertile soil being sold to neighboring Gulf countries. To circumvent the law, the soil is shipped as sand, grit, and minerals. Officially, it’s illegal to export fertile soil.

Studies have shown that creating fertile soil can take 200 to one thousand years based on climate conditions.

On April 10 this year, Fars news agency, closely tied to the IRGC, reported: “Soil and water are some of the most important and strategic factors in guaranteeing food security. Unfortunately, we have seen a steady and silent stream of soil export from the southern borders of the country.”

Iranian state-run media’s reporting on these matters should be taken with a lot of salt. They are like the thief who steals something and runs out of the store crying: “Thief! Thief!”

Iran’s Head of Judiciary, Sadeq Larijani, with a staggering wealth of at least $300 million accumulated through the Iranian kleptocracy, is the same person who’s asked Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, with a fund worth over $90 billion called Setad, to set up special anti-corruption courts to fight corrupt leaders including both “official and military” people.

The soil sellout seems to have become a routine in the Iranian regime. On July 27th, the Young Journalist Club, affiliated with Basij, IRGC’s paramilitary force, reported quoting the director general of the water and soil office in the environment organization: “Selling soil had its ups and downs in different eras. For example between 2001 and 2011, we had soil exporting docks in Asaluyeh [a county in Bushehr province in southern Iran] and soil was sent to Arab countries, especially the United Arab Emirates, to build artificial islands.”

As if selling out Iran’s soil wasn’t enough, the regime is depriving the residents of Isfahan and Khuzestan provinces from water and is exporting it to Iraq and Kuwait.

Bloody clashes over water between Iranian farmers and the regime’s forces are a common thing these days.

Obviously, Iranian officials deny water exports but Mohammad Khatami’s administration signed a contract with Kuwait to export annually 330 million cubic meters of water to that country.

On January 26, 2008, Manouchehr Mottaki, foreign minister in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration, in a joint press conference with his Kuwaiti counterpart, called the water transport the most important economic cooperation between the two countries saying, “This has on the agenda since many years.”

The Iranian regime is also exporting potable water to Iraq since 2009.

Back then, when former Iraqi prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki was asked about the Iranian contractor, he declined to answer.

On 5th September 2009, Asreh Iran website quoted Basra’s governor, Shaltah Abud, saying: “If not for Iran’s water, we would have died of thirst.” Back then, potable water was transported with tankers from Khuzestan to Basra.

Asreh Iran continues: “Shaltah further asks the Iraqi government to sign a deal with Iran to provide potable water and farming water for Basra from Iran through pipelines.”

Plundering Iran’s natural resources is a dangerous game with a nation’s basic right to live and will have widespread repercussion for generations.

Exploiting Iran’s natural resources is mostly run by the IRGC and the revenue is used for suppressing the Iranian people, exporting terrorism to the region, and filling the pockets of a few politically connected elite.